China REJECTS US claim that COVID leaked from Wuhan lab

China’s Foreign Ministry is backing down after an Energy Department analysis concluded that the COVID-19 outbreak likely originated after a leak from a Chinese research lab in Wuhan.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning accused unnamed parties of trying to smear or vilify China, even amid continued calls for China to provide full access to information from its Wuhan facilities.

“Certain parties should stop repeating the ‘lab leak’ narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicizing origin tracing,” he said during a press conference on Monday.

“The origin of the new coronavirus is a scientific question and should not be politicized,” said the Wall Street Journal reported after its own report on Sunday about the Department of Energy’s new findings of an accidental leak, rather than a probable origin that jumped from animals in close contact with humans.

He talked about Chinese cooperation with investigative agencies, although in 2021 China refused an effort by the World Health Organization to carry out a second phase of its research. the group has denied abandonment his research amid China’s obstacles.

Congressional Republicans, who have previously spoken about the lab leak theory, seized on the new report.

‘Re. China’s lab leak, proven right, doesn’t matter. What matters is holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable so this doesn’t happen again,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) tweeted.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) tweeted the report on the energy labs, adding: “For years, Anthony Fauci and Biden officials called this a conspiracy,” she wrote, going after the former director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The Department of Energy, which maintains a group of national laboratories, now joins the FBI in supporting the possibility of a laboratory leak as the possible origin of the virus, though it concluded with “low confidence” and many other agencies support a traditional propagation originating in the environment.

The Department of Energy has reversed its previous position and used new research to conclude that the Covid-19 virus most likely leaked from a Chinese research laboratory.

The new conclusion was issued in an update to a 2021 document prepared by the Director of National Intelligence and recently released to White House lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Therefore, the Department of Energy has now joined the FBI in saying the virus likely spread from a laboratory in Wuhan. However, four other agencies are still said to favor the ‘natural spill’ theory that the virus escaped via an animal at a nearby meat market. Two agencies, one of which is the CIA, have yet to state a final position.

The change in tone from the Department of Energy is important because the agency is known for its expertise and oversees several US laboratories, some of which conduct biological research.

The Department of Energy reversed its position and concluded, based on new intelligence, that the Covid-19 virus most likely leaked from a Chinese research laboratory. In the photo, the Wuhan Institute of Virology in February 2021

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that there was still “no definitive answer.”

The FBI concluded in 2021 that the virus leaked from a laboratory, saying it did so with “moderate confidence.” The Department of Energy changed its position and did so with “low confidence,” the WSJ reported.

US officials told the publication that while both departments agree, they formed their conclusions for different reasons.

The FBI also has expertise in disease and virology, hiring microbiologists and immunologists and taking part in their efforts to protect the country against bioterrorism and weapons.

The government officials who disclosed the Energy Department’s reversal did not comment on what new intelligence information they based their conclusion on.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that there was still “no definitive answer.”

This is what I can tell you. President Biden has repeatedly directed all elements of our intelligence community to put forth effort and resources to get to the bottom of this issue,” he said.

‘If we get any more knowledge or information, we’ll share it with Congress and we’ll share it with the American people. But at this time, no definitive answer has emerged from the intelligence community on this question.’

Sullivan pointed to a “variety of views in the intelligence community.” Some elements of the intelligence community have come to conclusions on one side, others on the other. Several of them have said that they simply don’t have enough information to be sure.

Virologist Shi Zheng-li, nicknamed the ‘Bat Lady’, appears in the lab. She searched for dozens of deadly Covid-like viruses in bat caves and studied them at the WIV.

It comes after the US Office of the Inspector General in January openly criticized the National Institutes of Health for failing to adequately keep up with US-funded virus experiments in China in the lead up to the outbreak.

The federal audit looked at three taxpayer-funded research grants awarded to the EcoHealth Alliance, led by British scientist Peter Daszak, between 2014 and 2021.

It found that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and EcoHealth failed to “understand the nature of the research conducted, identify potential problem areas, and take corrective action.”

“With improved oversight, NIH could have taken more timely corrective actions to mitigate the inherent risks associated with this type of research,” the report added.

While the laboratory leak theory was initially dismissed as conspiracy and xenophobic, a growing number of scientists have come to the idea that the virus may have escaped during an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The research center is less than 10 miles from an animal slaughter market where the first series of human cases clustered. Some experts also claim that Covid’s unique spike protein, which it uses to infect people, shows engineering characteristics.

But others have considered those scenarios unlikely and say there is some indirect evidence that Covid jumped from animals at the Huanan Seafood Market, where animals known to harbor Covid, including raccoon dogs, hedgehogs, rats and squirrels, they were kept in miserable conditions.

No direct evidence of a natural or man-made origin has been published.